Acoustic Performance-Based Design: A Brief Overview of the Opportunities and Limits in Current Practice

Current development in digital design, combined with the growing awareness of the importance of building performance, had drawn attention to performance-based design (PBD) in architecture. PBD benefits both design workflow and outcome, allowing one to control the performance of the design proposal since early design phases. The paper aims to explore its current application in the acoustic field, where its potential is still little exploited in architectural practice. A set of built case studies is collected and briefly analyzed with the aim to shed some light on the state of the art of the application of acoustic performance-based design (APBD) in practice. The analysis suggests that in order to encourage the application of APBD it is needed on one side to enhance the integration and interoperability among modeling and simulation tools, and on the other side to improve the acoustic knowledge and programming skills of the architectural practitioners.